Pubertal Status and Psychosocial Development: Findings from the Early Adolescence Study

Abstract

For decades, puberty has been assumed to be a major force affecting adolescent behavior. Psychoanalytic scholars have attributed some of the apparent changes in adolescent behavior to an increase in sexual drive and, more recently, to the surge in gonadal hormones thought to underlie increases in libido. Boys’ and girls’ status classifications have been found to compare favorably with their pubertal status scores and hence appear to be valid. Differences among pubertal status groups in terms of mood variables appeared only in seventh and eighth grade, and appeared more consistently in boys than in girls. The multivariate effect was significant only for boys in seventh grade. Closer inspection of the specific pubertal status effects suggests a second general point: pubertal effects are frequently not so strong that they consistently influence whole sets of indicators, but rather, one indicator at one grade level and another indicator at the next may be involved.

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